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Issue 99, Month Day, Year

In the news

CCP announced last week that EVE online will receive an expansion this coming winter. The Trinity Expansion will include a major graphics update as well as a number of additions to the game's content and will be free to all EVE subscribers.

CCP's Chief Operating Officer issues a statement about Friday's EVE Online downtime and security breach. According to Hörðdal, no account or billing information was compromised and the servers are back up and being closely monitored.

In this week's Community Blog Spotlight, Community Manager Laura Genender highlights two blogs with opposing viewpoints about PvE and the competitive nature of MMOs.

"Why," he asks, "do so many people make PvE a competitive environment? Exactly WHY do you need to see the DPS of a weapon to the last mathematical detail?... You cannot beat me in PvE! It's not possible...because there's no contest." To NetSapiens, leveling and DPS aren't a race, because not everyone is aiming for the same thing. So you out DPS'd me, and you're bragging about it? "You just got up from a game of solitaire in the mall, screaming 'PWNED!!' to everyone else eating at the food court."

Now, you're probably expecting vajuras to argue for competition in PvE - rather, vajuras argues that the game itself encourages this activity, and the solution to this problem isn't in player mindset, it's in the developer's.

Vajuras starts by outlining The Problem: "Within the constraints and boundaries placed by the Game Developer, players will always strive to optimize their builds, teams, and guild compositions." If there is a known strategy and class-mix that can beat an encounter, he says, players will take it.

You can read the full article here, or read the original blogs by Vajuras and NetSapiens.
More Blogs can be found on our site here

Featured Article: A Talk with Perpetual Entertainment

Last week Managing Editor Jon Wood had a chance to sit down for an exclusive interview with Chris McKibbin and Daron Stinnett from perpetual Entertainment to talk about the recent announcement that Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising would be put on "indefinite hold", as well as the future of the company and Star Trek Online.

When I asked the group why exactly they had chosen to put the game on indefinite hold, I was pointed back toward the official statement that the company issued back on the 9th. "The decision to put [the game] on hold was a result of looking at all of Perpetual's opportunities," answered Mckibbon, "Gods & Heroes, Star Trek, and the Perpetual Platform Services business."

"Why then," I asked, "was Gods & Heroes in particular chosen of the three for the hold?"

"Getting G&H to the level of quality and polish we demand was going to take more time - which is not in any way unique in the MMO world - but it would have had an adverse impact on our other opportunities," he said. He went on to explain why each of the other projects was kept: "The Platform Business is the base for anything [we] do and is what the company was founded on, so it is necessary. Weighing the market potential of G&H versus STO, we all believe that while G&H had good market potential, STO has phenomenal market potential."

Fury, the action packed PvP MMO from Auran launched last week, and MMORPG was there to what it's all about. Managing Editor Jon Wood had been playing the Fury Beta, but could not attend the content-complete demo, so Staff Writer Adele Caelia filled his shoes at that event, the result of which is this preview where you get both Jon's impressions and Adele's.

Fury. One person described this game to me as, "an MMO with all of the boring stuff stripped out of it".

"Unlike most other games," reads the Introduction on the game's homepage, "Fury doesn't shackle you with class restrictions. It won't make you grind levels for months before you can begin PvP, and it won't make you fight a single mob."

Running - Ok, this was very cool. Instead of the regular character animations for running that you see in most MMOs, when you turn your Fury avatar, they actually lean into the turn. This gives the impression that the characters are moving fast, and helps with the fast-paced feeling of the game.

Did you know that CCP has employees originally hailing from all of the habitable continents (excluding inhospitable Antarctica, of course.) Spread out over three offices in North America, Europe and Asia. Jon Wood recently attended the office opening for the NA office in Atlanta. Read more here.